With the likes of Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis at Giant Bomb decrying Mega Man 9 as way hard, I wondered if maybe I had made a bad decision in buying fully three copies of this downloadable gem.^[1]

However, a Gamasutra article about the game gave me hope that I could get along with the challenge.  Now, at my in-laws’ house, I have determined experimentally that I am, in fact, still a hard enough dude to enjoy some Mega Man, by knocking out Galaxy Man, Jewel Man, and Plug Man already, and itching for more (once Dad’s done watching the Rose Bowl).

(However, I’m not too hard a dude to appreciate this little guide.)

1. One on XBLA, one on my Wii, and one along with a copy of Mega Man 2 on my youngest brother’s Wii.  This last one was so that I could play in our PA hotel room, but also so that he’ll have a chance to hone his skills.

When I was a kid, I’d use my construction toys (Lego, K-Nex, etc.) to build various fantastic vehicles and then push or hoist them around the house.  BKNB is that, all over again, but you build the vehicles and operate them in fantastic environments to complete challenges.  As you progress, you can also unlock more and more parts to make progressively crazier vehicles.

I probably don’t have to say anything more than that, since there’s a demo out.  The difficulty curve seems to be shallow enough that kids and casual gamers should be able to play it, too, if they enjoy it.

Attention, family members who have been asking me about my wish lists:

I have now vetted my Amazon.com and Thinkgeek.com wish lists.  They now contain nothing that I already own.

Yay!

You know how First Person Shooter games sometimes have jumping puzzles in them?  And they’re really hard, because you can’t see your body?  And a high-definition screen and surround sound does not really make up for the lack of depth perception and proprioception?

Mirror’s Edge is all those stupid jumping puzzles made into a game.  I’m going to keep trying to make this work, but I can’t help wondering:  Did DICE make this game because they found a way to make this into a good idea, or because console gamers don’t play a lot of FPSes, and don’t already know this is a terrible idea?

If it’s the former, then I need to practice, because my current gaming skills aren’t giving me “awesome first-person running and jumping” except in very short spurts.  The sense of speed in straightaways is breathtaking, but I think I’ve gotten more sense of speed in the race to terminal velocity and sudden, terminal deceleration.

If it’s the latter… well, I knew this game would be a gamble going into it, but I’d still miss those sixty bucks.

Here’s my formula:  Grab a voter guide from a source you trust^[1].  Verify where the candidates stand on those issues you count as important.  Then, vote your principles and conscience.

Oh, and get in early, to avoid the rush!  :)

(Comments are closed on this post.  Take your opinion to the polls!)

1. Or, even better, get a few guides to compare.

But no, even trying to recall it only brings to mind that there is a low electronic beeping somewhere in the Megaton theme song that always makes me think of computers, even though Megaton itself seems far more “wild west” to me.

Today, we watched Speed Racer, but in some unusual conditions:

1. We muted the sound,^[1]
2. We turned on Spanish subtitles, and
3. We looped the Wipeout 3 soundtrack on shuffle over the film.

It was OK.

1. Important: we did not just fail to turn on the receiver, but actually turned it on and then muted it.  Not for any particular reason.  It was muted from the beginning, and not because the audio annoyed us at first.

Despite what you may think, I’m pretty pleased with this outcome.  I always budget about a grand for preventative maintenance at the first cold weather.  Also, this car is at 120,000 miles, and the longer I can keep it going, the longer I don’t have to buy a new one.  :)

Q:  My car’s ABS and TRAC OFF lights are coming on from time to time.  They will go back off sometimes, as well.  Even though the car is safe to drive without anti-lock brakes and traction control, I’d like to have them back before it snows.
A:  Your rear-right ABS sensor is out of spec.  However, we can’t just replace the sensor.  The part comes as a sensor and hub.  And we’ll have to clear away some rust as well.  ~$390.

Q:  My fuel gauge fluctuates a lot all of the sudden.  For instance, I’ll start driving when it indicates 1/2 tank, and arrive at my destination with 5/8 tank.  This is more than it used to fluctuate.  (I refuel by mileage instead of waiting for an idiot light, so this is only inconvenient.)
A:  Dunno, but your fuel filter is getting kinda old, and is past its predicted operational lifetime.  We can replace that for you and see if it helps?  ~$80.

Q:  How do my tires look?
A:  They’re fine right now, but you’ll be sad as soon as it snows.  Four new tires for you.  ~360.

Q:  Balancing and alignment service?
A:  Lifetime rotation/balancing/alignment are still available.  ~30.

(Oh hey, he just called me.  They have to break the center caps out of my wheels… wonder how much those cost to replace?  I’ll have to get those elsewhere, of course, but I had already planned to replace them.  Also, I guess the ABS sensor was a pain, so they’ll be late.  “No worries, Mechanic, this is why I brought it to you on a Saturday.”)

Q:  Go ahead and do the winter check-up and give me my synthetic oil change.
A:  No prob.  ~$(do not recall)

Okay!  I’m off to find new hubcaps.

1. Hilariously, after he called me and gave me all the quotes and got my approval and decisions, he called me back with an amended total because I had left a $25 coupon as well.  I wonder if he’s like me, in that he worries about how people feel when he gives them big bills…

Okay.  How big a computer nerd do you have to be before you are walking 0.8 miles, and you think, “Man, walking still works pretty reliably to get me around.  The old Biped Two-Step is still pretty easy.”

Granted, I’m not in my usual state of mind.  Why?  Try this:

1. Stay out late for beers and all-you-can-eat fish+chips at a local brewery, then stay up some more to play with the new PSP firmware
2. Wake up throughout the night due to restless stomach (oh, fish+chips, why must you be so SALTY and OILY)
3. Get out of bed unnaturally early (for a Saturday, 6:20 AM will do) to take your car into the mechanic before the 8:00 AM rush^[1]
4. ??? (I’m close to a breakthrough here.  I think “???” might actually be “nap”.)
5. Profit! (HAR HAR AS IF. I took my car to a mechanic.  I’m in for $188.83 before they even finish the diagnostics on my anti-lock braking system.)

P.S. - Re: “unnaturally early” - For those of you who get up every morning at 5:00 AM and go punch wallabees or whatever it is you do at 5:00 AM, you probably weren’t drowning fried cods in beers at 10:00 PM, so I think we work from different givens.  You can have your dark wake-up calls; I’ll take my dark at night when it seems more natural.  Besides, by working in shifts, we can oppress the wallabees at all hours.

P.P.S. - Also, if my wife - who is always awake before I am - is so sleepy that I’d rather leave her in bed than have her come pick me up in the 45 degree weather, it must be unnaturally early.

P.P.P.S. - Also, I have made claims that I like this weather, but those claims were necessarily based on memories that were at least a year old.  I can now substantiate those claims, though:  I enjoyed taking a chilly walk through dry leaves with my knit cap, fleece, jacket and gloves on.  My face was pleasantly cold, and the rest of me was not too hot. ^[2]

P.P.P.P.S. - Given that I program the thermostat at my house, you may now pity my wife.

P.P.P.P.P.S. - Small miracle: I dislike Halloween more every year, but my walk turned up just about zero crazy-zealous Halloween decorations.  Unless you count the costumed mannequins in the front window of the… um… “Adult Sleepwear” store down the street.  But they’re crazy-zealous year round.

1. The rush is not so brutal on a Saturday, but it’s nearly a guarantee that if you bring your car in that early, you will get it looked at before 10:00 AM instead of after lunch.
2. Note to future self: Hi!  I left some candy in the back of the cupboard, which you have probably totally forgotten about by now.  Check it for ants and staleness.  If it’s still okay, Enjoy!  Um… unless you already ate it, in which case, it wasn’t me!  Well, it wasn’t me me!  It was the me between me me and you me, so blame him (us).
   Oh.  Also, you can use this paragraph as substantiation for your weather claims in (me me) my future!  Yeah, totally awesome.

Look, I understand that Final Fantasy is a Fantasy game.  It’s right in the title.  That makes it hard to miss.  Given this, I am willing to suspend my disbelief in a lot of situations.

Sharks are teal blue?  That one’s easy to work with, because teal is not far from a realistic grey.

I'm a Shaaaaaark

Mermaids are pink?  OK, sure.  I don’t know what color real mermaids are, anyway.

All the mermaids are identical

Mermaids are suspicious of my characters’ ability to breathe underwater.  This is fair.  My party possesses “oxyale” (Magic Fairy MacGuffin #802), with which mermaids may not be familiar.  (I mean, you can’t even buy the stuff.  You have to find a pirate who’s kidnapped a fairy and sold her into slavery to a desert caravan… look, it’s complicated.)

How can YOU talk underwater?

But come on… White Sharks…

I'm a Shaaaaaark toooooo

…are purple?  They’re not… white?

(This post is dedicated to my wife, who was willing to buy into all the pseudo-scientific claptrap underpinning Mass Effect, including the mysterious Element Zero (Space MacGuffin #2193) - with its ability to produce both the titular gravity distortions, and make unborn humans psychic - until they mentioned running a “negative current” through a device.  “Negative current?!  There’s no such thing!”  Welcome to our household of nerds.)

P.S. - I almost forgot my obligatory FF8 teaser!

A gun? That's also a sword? e_e

Instead of watching tonight’s debate, I shaved off my beard.

Most of you who have been putting up with me for a long time know about these “Face Vacations”, but everyone else probably thinks I do it to avoid frightening small children.

It is not so!  If it were, October would be a terrible time for me to shave!  But to understand the origins of the Face Vacaction, we must travel back in time, to… the boring part of my Origin Story!

~~~^[1]

As a young man, I was cursed with (dun dun dunnnnnnnn) DANDRUFF.  In retrospect, I think I got off lucky, since other young men had to contend with volcanic acne, wildly cracking voices, mangy facial hair, or occasionally a third leg growing out the back of their necks.  However, shampoo commercials of the time made it clear that it was morally wrong, and possibly a felony, to have dandruff.  (Some of the more extreme Western philosophies actually contend that dandruff is grounds for mercy killing.)

I learned of ways to cope with this problem, of course: wearing bright colors and loud patterned clothing, cutting my hair short, disavowing family and friends and living in a cave.  Fortunately, time, frequent washing, and the liberal application of medicated shampoos cleared up the problem, before the Federal Bureau of Dandruff Investigation was able to find me and bring charges.  Sure, some of the stronger brews may have contributed in my current ailments of frequent headaches and a painfully sensitive scalp, but at least those aren’t morally wrong.

~~~^[2]

Fast forward to the present day, when I can excercise the most awesome of (predominantly) male superpowers: growing a beard!  Also, my beard comes in very red, which is awesome.^[3]

I love my beard.  It serves several important purposes:

1. It gives the illusion that I have a jawline.
2. It masks the more ridiculous features of my face.
3. It counterbalances my high-pitched voice when others guess my age.
4. It makes me look like the dude on my driver’s license.
5. It scares small children.

However, I have sensitive skin, and I can never get my beard completely dry after washing my face.^[4]  After some months of awesome beardedness, my chin will get itchy and red, and I will get a rash.  And, then… BEARDRUFF.  Which is like dandruff.  But from a beard, and therefore even more reprehensible.

Once a year or so, then, I give my face a vacation, so that it can heal, and I can rejoin society.  Only, this time, it’s been much longer than a year.  You know how aftershave can sting sometimes, if you shave after a long hiatus?  Two years is a long hiatus.  And my gigantic nose almost wasn’t a problem, since I almost cut it off while shaving for the first time in memory. (I use a razor with six blades and a battery-powered motor.  SURELY they could afford to put training wheels or something on it.)

Pain aside, it made me sad to shave off my beard.  I really like that beard, and I think I look like me when I have it cut just so.  It’s my favorite fashion, and I hate to be without it.  I’m trying not to get too attached to it.  I’ll think of it as a mighty Phoenix, perched proudly (on my face) until it falls in a cloud of flame (I shave it off)… and later it is reborn (grows back) magnificently from its ashes (my… stubble?) and delivers a magical weapon (surely not a razor…) in the nick of time to a boy wizard (what) who is fighting a monstrous lizard (I’m seriously lost here).

No, while I stay clean-shaven for a week or two, I’m trying to look on the bright side.  Obviously, there are some advantages to not having a beard.  For instance, I can eat barbecue ribs without using a hotel bottle of shampoo in the restaurant’s bathroom afterwards.  Also, I hear that gigantic, hilarious eyebrows are “in” this year.

Perhaps most importantly, I’ll have some time away from my beard.  After I scare myself half to death in the mirror every morning, I can reflect on how my beard is my biggest temptation to vanity.  Of all of my fashion and grooming choices, it really is the most important to me.  I can really like the way I look in a beard, and I can really enjoy the style of my beard.  But, I shouldn’t be sad when I cut it off.

After all, for now I’ll be able to say for sure that a man is not defined by his beard.

He is totally defined by his hat.

1. This is an emoticon for “hazy flashback fade”, which I bought from a guy who was hanging out in the dried fish aisle at the Korean grocery store across the street.  He told me that it might not be recognizable to Western audiences yet, because they hadn’t released it over here.  I was skeptical at first, but then he showed it to me on his cell phone, which was pretty advanced.  (He claimed it was a new model of Android phone, and by way of evidence, folded it in such a way that it became a small robot, which spoke without using contractions.)  He said it was a steal at 30 “Zenny” (which is apparently a minority Japanese currency?), but because of the weak dollar, the exchange rate put it at about $237.00.  He drove a hard bargain, but I think I got the upper hand, because I talked him down all the way to $150.00!

   Anyway, I figured you guys may not have seen it yet, so I thought I’d better explain!  Oh, and if you want to use it, too, the guy said he could probably arrange bulk rates.

   Also, that store has Pocky.  Rad.

2. I guess I’m going to have to pay again.  Sure, $300.00 may seem like a lot.  But we have just traveled in time.  Twice.  Think about it.
3. Captain James Tiberius Kirk, when he grows a beard, has one that grows in brick red.  He confided this to me in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, in which he also congratulated me for using “three dimensional thinking” during a military manouever in a sensor-inhibiting environment.

   I have not read this book since I was 8 or 10 years old, probably.  Maybe 12?  I don’t think I was even clear on what a Klingon was at that time, but mark my words, I already knew with certainty that space and the inhabitants thereof were the pinnacle of cool.

   I remember all of this stuff with crystal clarity.

   If you think this is way too nerdy, then I suggest you praise God every night in your bedtime prayers that science has not yet discovered the secret to reading minds, because I swear, this does not scratch the surface of what lies dormant in my pulsating cerebrum.  The deep backstory underpinning the “LEGO men from space” / “Hall of Heroes” / “Tribe of My Little Ponies and Miniature Barbie Doll” playtime that my little sister and I shared might break you.  (I think… the LEGO men were the uncles of one of the Ponies?  It’s complicated.)

4. I’m pretty sure blow-drying my face would introduce complications.

Ninja vs. Gilded Lily

Still playing, after playing all weekend…  It helps to have a cable that hooks the PSP up to the TV, so that I don’t get eyestrain from playing a portable game for so long!  Also, this way K gets to participate.

Disassembling Unnatural Creatures

…And of course, this means that other games still have to wait!

"Try to control your emotions..."

Sony released Guilty Gear Judgment on PSN today, to run on the PSP.  I wavered…

• It’s a best-of-class brawler series…
• but I’m not a huge brawler fan…
• but I liked it just fine when they were still calling it a platforming series^[1] …
• but it’s almost 500MB I have to free up on my Memory Stick…
• but it’s only $5.99…

Oh wait, Majesco^[2] put it out?  I guess I have to buy it now.  ;)

OH HAY UPDATE

So, I once again am wrong on The Internets, and have gotten the Guilty Gear and Metal Slug bits of my brain crossed.  ><

This is a brawler, or as we say in the ancient past where I live, a beat-em-up.  So says Giant Bomb Dot Com.  (Thanks, Giant Bomb Dot Com!)

But… it’s based on Guilty Gear?  Does that mean…

WRYYYYYYY

1. I like 2D platformers.  Why do they have to rename the genre now?
2. Where PrismGlass‘ brother now works as a beta tester…

I have played this game many times.  And seldom do I break the tradition of the first group I ever fielded, well over a decade ago^[1]:

The Original Party

Admission: this is senseless.  When I first played Final Fantasy on the NES, I was not familiar with the genre, despite coming in well after the fourth game in the series had been released on the SNES.  I chose these classes because they were on the screen to begin with, and I figured I didn’t know any better.  I didn’t even have the instruction manual to guide me.

(Also, it always struck me as strange that the names could only be four letters long.  Later on, I learned Japanese, and then it made sense:  In the Japanese kana, each character represents a syllable.  So, allowing up to four characters is allowing up to four syllables, and a four syllable name is quite long enough!  Allowing longer names after the translation to English would have required an interface overhaul.)

And now, I have the PSP version.

It looks and sounds very good, even by comparison to the GBA version of a few years ago:

My "Expanded" Names Aren't Much Classier

I think it’s hilarious that I keep buying and playing new versions of this game, and I love it every time.  This time, it’s even pre-empted another old favorite I had started back into.

Don't Wait Up...

1. One of my little brothers will have to tell me if I got the Black Belt’s name right.  I keep oscillating between “Kane” and “Kage”.

Yes, I’ve had a few, and now a slice of chocolate cake.  However, this time I’m resisting the urge to start a worldwide organization devoted to the promotion of chocolate cakes.

Speaking of which, I need to find some new YouTube clips of cats falling down.